TikTok has been officially banned in the United States unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sells its US stakes. Yesterday, the US Congress voted to pass the bill that would force the sale of TikTok or ban it from US markets due to alleged national security risks. The vote came after years of attempts to tackle the app’s risks. President Joe Biden signed the legislation hours after Congress’s vote. ByteDance now has about nine months to sell the app, or it will be banned from US markets and removed from the app stores of Google Play Store and Apple nationwide.
TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew criticized the bill in a video, calling it a ban on the platform and “a ban on you and your voice.” Chew also claimed that many politicians sponsoring the bill admitted that a TikTok ban was their ultimate goal. He said that TikTok’s freedom of expression reflects American values that uphold freedom and claimed the company would fight for its rights in the courts. TikTok shared a statement that called the law unconstitutional and pledged to challenge it in court. The company believes that they will eventually prevail in the courts and will also continue investing and innovating to keep US data safe and their platform free from outside influence and manipulation.
TikTok’s ownership structure raised concerns as it could allegedly allow the Chinese government to access the data of its millions of American users. The company has continuously refuted lawmakers’ claims regarding their ownership structure that could potentially pose a risk to national security. TikTok’s ban has already been imposed by more than 30 American states and a few countries like Canada, the European Union, Taiwan, Afghanistan, and most recently, India. The bill also provided military assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, apart from funds for foreign aid. In response to the package, TikTok wrote its concerns over how the foreign aid package is being used to push a bill that infringes the free speech rights of 170 million Americans
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